As
we get closer to the midterm elections, the rhetoric is ratcheting up.
Americans for Prosperity (aka the Koch brothers) is continuing to run their
ridiculous ads stating that Jeanne Shaheen cast THE DECIDING VOTE for
Obamacare. In
other states, the name is changed to fit the candidate the Kochs are working
against. My question is this: why don’t the Koch brothers want non-wealthy
Americans to have health insurance?
I’ve
never been a fan of the Affordable Care Act. I was unhappy when single payer
advocates weren’t even given a seat at the table when it was being discussed. I
was unhappy there was no public option. I’m downright peeved that this mess was
a project of the Heritage Foundation, something that all those who bark about
“socialism” either don’t know or don’t care to acknowledge.
The
ACA has meant the end of the pre-existing condition. That is an incredibly good
thing. It has given young people the option of staying on their parents
insurance longer. It has also meant that a lot of people who couldn’t afford
insurance before are able to afford it now. The GOP rumblings of “free market
solutions” ought to be met with derision. They had decades to create those
solutions, and they never did. The only plan the Kochs and their acolytes have
for the non-wealthy can be summed up in one word. Die.
The
reasons we need a single payer system in this country were made clear in the
recent Supreme Court decision on the Hobby Lobby case. Hobby Lobby is a family
owned company. They have a chain of stores that sell craft supplies. They are
apparently a religious family, and they were miffed that the ACA meant they were
mandated to provide insurance to their female employees that covered all forms
of birth control. It offended their religious sensibilities, they claimed, so
they took it to SCOTUS, and the Roberts court, ever happy to rule against
women, did so.
Prior to the ACA, Hobby Lobby stores offered insurance that covered the same forms of birth control that they suddenly got religion over when Obamacare came along. Remember all the people who wailed about putting the gummint between people and their doctors? They are now oddly silent at the ruling that puts employers between women and their doctors. After all, who better to make women’s health care decisions than purveyors of cheap craft supplies imported from China?
Prior to the ACA, Hobby Lobby stores offered insurance that covered the same forms of birth control that they suddenly got religion over when Obamacare came along. Remember all the people who wailed about putting the gummint between people and their doctors? They are now oddly silent at the ruling that puts employers between women and their doctors. After all, who better to make women’s health care decisions than purveyors of cheap craft supplies imported from China?
Good
news for men though. Your erectile dysfunction drugs, penis pumps, and penile
implants will continue to be covered by all forms of insurance. The religious
do not want you to believe that your impotence is God’s will. God, it seems, is
only intent on legislating the uterus.
There
are a number of reasons we need single payer health care. The first is to
eliminate employers from the equation. Health care should not be tied to
employment. Health care should not be employer approved or supervised
Hot
on the heels of the Hobby Lobby decision came the Wheaton decision, where a
religious college in Illinois decided they didn’t want to fill out waiver forms
for Obamacare that stipulated they were too religious to provide whore pills
for their female students. Naturally the male members of the Supreme Court
thought that was just fine. Now Gordon College in Massachusetts (a small,
non-profit Christian school in Wenham, MA) has decided to seize the moment.
They’ve signed on to a letter asking President Obama to exempt them from an
executive order (that hasn’t been put into effect yet) banning discrimination
in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation. Apparently nothing says, “we are
followers of Jesus Christ” quite like discrimination.
I
have written before that here in the US, we’ve stopped thinking about or
planning for the future. In fact, our heels are dug in, and a great many of our
leaders are working to turn the clock back, to an imaginary time of great happiness
for them. The 1950’s. (Or for some, the 1800’s.) In the 1950’s women knew their
place. They were at home, cooking, cleaning, caring for the kids, and voting
the way their husbands told them to. They didn’t have many birth control
options. If they got pregnant and
couldn’t afford another baby, they had back alley abortions and some of them
died. Those who favor the 1800’s would prefer to go back to the days when women
were essentially chattel. They couldn’t own property, sign contracts, vote, or
have any legal voice in the lives of their children. They were the property of
fathers, brothers, or husbands. A number of conservatives these days publicly
yearn for the days when women couldn’t vote. David Barton the fauxhistorian
claims that denying the vote to women kept families together. Ann Coulter
doesn’t seem to understand that without suffragists, she’d be home birthin’ and
scrubbin’.
The
birth control pill changed everything. That and the decision in Roe v. Wade.
Suddenly women had control over their own bodies! They were no longer hostage
to their reproductive organs and the men in their lives. Naturally, this
displeased a number of men. It still does. They’ve been trying for decades to
turn the clock back, and eradicate any gains made by women. Pretending concern
for life is one of the most hypocritical. The same men who rail against
abortion are at the borders turning away buses filled with refugee children.
The deeply religious folk at Hobby Lobby, Gordon College, and Wheaton aren’t filling
buses, hitting up the ATM, and heading down to the border to care for those
same children. The terrorists and “sidewalk counselors” who harangue women
entering health clinics aren’t interested in caring for actual children. For
all of these hypocrites, it’s all about imaginary fetuses. Imagine how much
better children’s lives would be if the focus were on the born instead of the
not even conceived?
As
for the ongoing war on women, the question is simple. Are women fully equal
human beings with the same right to bodily autonomy and medical privacy as men?
Yes or no?
© sbruce 2014. Published as a biweekly op-ed in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.
h/t to patriotboy for GOP Jesus, and Mike Thompson for Blasphemy.
